Dearest friend,
In a time when the world feels unbearably heavy
While we witness genocide with aching helplessness
While our friends and neighbors are being ruthlessly abducted from their homes and jobs
While the cruelty of state executions persists…
We must hold tight to the truth that change is still possible.
We are not powerless.
We are creators of the future we deserve.
Community members like you supported and uplifted us through many long nights strategizing, writing and prepping, months attending countless meetings to push forward singular policies, and years standing alongside impacted loved ones until they get justice. Our statewide solidarity has resulted in big wins during a year that has felt deeply dystopian. Wins that are even more significant in a battleground state like Texas. Wins that would have been impossible without you.
Please join us in celebrating! This year we:
● Registered 18 testimonies at the TX state legislature on 6 different bills
● Facilitated 60+ public comments at county commissioners courts in 5 counties
● Presented 10+ public comments to board meetings of jail medical and mental health providers
● Successfully acquired documents under open records requests in over 1,414 jail custody deaths
● Co-hosted 3 film screenings on cash bail
● Spoke on 5 panels
● Conducted 8 teach-ins for medical students, elected officials and coalition allies
● Successfully pitched and were quoted in 50+ news articles
● Collaborated on and were prominently featured in a New Yorker musical documentary short about Harris County Jail
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● In coalition with criminal justice advocacy allies, we successfully defeated the Police Secrecy Bill (SB 781/14/15/HB 2486/14/15) on the final day of the final special session three hours before Sine Die. This bill would have prevented us from getting any records connected to jailer misconduct in jail custody deaths.
● We helped our clients win a $1.5 million class action lawsuit against Smith County for unlawful over-detention.
● We forced the state regulatory agency TCJS to create a policy mandating jails to report and count out-of-state custody deaths when pretrial detainees are being shipped out of Texas to Louisiana and Mississippi. This is a huge win because until now, after 4 years of “outsourcing” we had no official accounting of our community members who were dying in custody in out-of-state private facilities.
● We successfully created and passed two pathbreaking Budget Riders this legislative session. The Continuity of Care Mental Health Rider mandates TCJS to collect and report essential data about clients of the state’s public mental health system who are held in county jails. The other one is the Maternal Health and Mortality Rider which mandates data collection and reporting of outcomes when pregnant people and new mothers are incarcerated pretrial.
● We successfully advocated for TCJS to accept our draft of new rules to comply with a guardianship rule change (SB 746 on Pg 5) which is aimed at protecting people who have court appointed guardians by mandating jails to include guardians in all decision making while their wards are detained.
● We were successful in securing the appointment of our Albert Schweitzer Fellow – Caroline Crain to the Administrative & Rules Advisory Committee of TCJS which is the sole state regulatory agency for the 244 county jails in TX. This doubles our presence as voting members on this important committee that is tasked with writing rules and jail minimum standards.
● We succeeded with our pretrial justice coalition in defeating harmful bail bills such as SJR 87 and SJR 1.
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Will you help us hold the the line in a
ground zero state?
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Currently we are facing a shortfall of $40,000.
It feels impossible to describe the outsized impact of our work. You can hear directly from community members whose lives have been transformed due to our advocacy. As a tiny group of all women of color, we are often told that we punch way above our weight.
Every day we answer dozens of emails, phone calls and letters from county jails. Every day we make a difference in the life of a marginalized Texan who is being held pretrial.
Every dollar donated to our work advances racial equity, mitigates harm, protects people with mental illness and disabilities and advances reproductive rights in county jails. Please consider becoming a monthly sustainer. We cannot do this without your support.
With love and solidarity,
the Texas Jail Project family
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